A Full Wall of E-Ink Paper Debuts in Japan

If Wired’s Steven Levythrew out his Macbook Air last year because its thin design easily blended with other flat recyclables (like magazines), how do you think an e-Ink paper display will fare when it looks exactly like a garbage bag?

At the FDPI conference in Yokohama this week, the Soken Chemical & Engineering Co. showed a wall of 30 x 30 cm e-ink paper displays that are some of the largest we’ve seen. The whole sheet is made out of acrylic resin (giving it’s papery cheapo appearance) and has a diameter of 0.1 mm. But to me, they’re more notorious for their Safeway stylings.

Soken calls these e-Ink displays “Twist Ball” types because they are made out of rotating fine particles with upper and lower surfaces when voltage is applied (though they’re basically the same e-Ink tech as that in your Kindle). The company used patterned electrodes to control the clock digits on the paper bag display above.

And despite the fact the whole wall on the picture below looks like a bad checkerboard color paper job, it’s covered with all e-Ink surfaces. The company is currently trying to incorporate more than two colors in a display at a time.

Do you guys think we need e-Ink in this type of a display? Or does it seem too flimsy to use?